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No.

Please.

It’s not possible—not here.

Not here. OK. Can we go somewhere else?

No. I have a boyfriend.

I think: the boyfriend. Still. I’ve read about him. Race-car driver. The same boyfriend she’s had for six years. I try to come up with something clever to say, some way of telling her to open herself to the possibility of being with me. With the silence stretching to an uncomfortable length, the moment sliding away, all I can come up with is this: Six years is a long time.

Yes, she says. Yes it is.

If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. I’ve lived that.

She doesn’t say anything. But it’s the way she doesn’t say anything. I’ve struck a chord.

I continue. It can’t be exactly what you’re looking for. I mean, I don’t want to make any as-sumptions—but.

I hold my breath. She doesn’t contradict me.

I say, I don’t want to be disrespectful, or take liberties, but just, can you just, please, could you, maybe, I don’t know, just get to know me?

No.

Coffee?

I can’t be in public with you. It wouldn’t be right.

What about letters? Can I write you?

She laughs.

Can I send you stuff? Can I let you know me before you decide if you want to get to know me?

No.

Not even letters?

There is someone who reads my mail.

I see.

I knock my fist against my forehead. Think, Andre, think.

I say, OK, look, how about this. You’re playing your next tournament in San Francisco. I’ll be there practicing with Brad. You said you love San Francisco. Let’s meet in San Francisco.

This is—possible.

This is—possible?

I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.

So can I call you, or do you just want to call me?

Call me after this tournament, she says. Let’s both play, and call me when you finish the tournament.

She gives me her cell phone number. I write it on a paper napkin, kiss it, and put it in my tennis bag.

I REACH THE SEMIS AND PLAY RAFTER. I beat him in straight sets. I don’t have to wonder who’s waiting for me in the final. It’s Pete. As always, Pete. I stagger back to the house, thinking shower, food, sleep. The phone rings—I’m sure it’s Stefanie, wishing me luck against Pete, confirming our San Francisco date.

But it’s Brooke. She’s in London and asks to come by and see me.

As I hang up the phone and turn, Perry is there, inches from my face.

Andre, please tell me you said no. Please tell me you’re not letting that woman come here.

She’s coming. In the morning.

Before you play the final at Wimbledon?

It’ll be fine.

SHE ARRIVES AT TEN, wearing an enormous British hat with a wide, floppy brim and plastic flowers. I give her a quick tour of the house. We compare it to the houses she and I used to rent, back in the day. I ask if she’d like something to drink.

Do you have any tea?

Sure.

I hear Brad cough in the next room. I know what the cough means. It’s the morning of the final. An athlete should never change his routine on the morning of a final. I’ve had coffee every morning of the tournament. I should be having coffee now.

But I want to be a good host. I make a pot of tea, and we drink it at a table under the kitchen window. We talk without saying anything. I ask if she has anything special she wanted to tell me. She misses me, she says. She wanted to tell me that.

She sees a stack of magazines on the corner of the table, copies of a recent Sports Illustrated. I’m on the cover. The headline is Suddenly Andre. (I’m suddenly starting to hate that word, suddenly.) Tournament officials sent them over, I tell her. They want me to autograph copies for fans and Wimbledon officials and staffers.

Brooke picks up one of the magazines, stares at my photo. I watch her stare. I think of that day thirteen years ago, sitting with Perry in his bedroom, beneath hundreds of Sports Illustrated covers, dreaming about Brooke. Now here she is, I’m on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Perry is a former producer of her TV show, and we’re all barely speaking.

She reads the headline aloud. Suddenly Andre. She reads it again. Suddenly Andre?

She looks up. Oh, Andre.

What?

Oh, Andre. I’m so so sorry.

Why?

Here it is, your big moment, and they make it all about me.

· · ·

STEFANIE IS IN THE FINAL TOO. She loses to Lindsay Davenport. She had been playing mixed doubles as well, with McEnroe, and they had reached the semis, but she pulled out because of a bad hamstring. I’m in the locker room, getting dressed for my match with Pete, and McEnroe is telling a group of players that Stefanie left him in the lurch.

Can you believe this bitch? She asks to play mixed doubles with me and I fucking do it and then we’re in the semis and she backs out?

Brad puts a hand on my shoulder. Steady, champ.

I start strong against Pete. My mind is going in several directions at once—how dare Mac say those things about Stefanie? what was the deal with that hat Brooke was wearing?—but somehow I’m playing solid, crisp tennis. It’s 3–all in the first set, Pete serving at love–40.

Triple break point. I see Brad smiling, punching Perry, shouting, Come on! Let’s go! I let myself think about Borg, the last person to win the French and Wimbledon back to back, a feat now within my grasp.

I imagine Borg phoning me again to congratulate me. Andre? Andre, it’s me. Björn. I envy you.

Pete wakes me from my fantasy. Unreturnable serve. Unreturnable serve. Blur. Ace.

Game, Sampras.

I stare at Pete in shock. No one, living or dead, has ever served like that. No one in the history of the game could have returned those serves.

He takes me out in straight sets, finishing me off with two aces, two fiery exclamation points at the end of a seamless performance. It’s the first match I’ve lost in a slam in the last fourteen matches, a streak of dominance almost without precedence in my career. But history will record that it’s Pete’s sixth Wimbledon, and his twelfth slam overall, tying him for most all-time among men—as history should. Later, Pete tells me he never saw me hit the ball as hard and clean as I did those first six games, and it made him raise his game, amp up his second serve by twenty miles an hour.

In the locker room I need to take the standard drug test. I so badly want to piss and run back to the house and call Stefanie, but I can’t, because I have a bladder like a whale. It takes forever. Finally my bladder cooperates with my heart.

I drop my bag in the front hall and lunge for the phone as if it’s a drop shot. Fingers trembling, I dial. Straight to voice mail. I leave a message. Hi. It’s Andre. Tournament’s over. I lost to Pete. Sorry about your loss to Lindsay. Call me when you can.

I sit. I wait. A day passes. No call. Another day. No call.

I hold the phone in front of my face and tell it: Ring.

I dial her again, leave another message. Nothing.

I fly back to the West Coast. As I step off the plane, I check my messages. Nothing.

I fly to New York for a charity event. I check my voice mail every fifteen minutes. Nothing.

J.P. meets me in New York City. We hit the town. P. J. Clarke’s and Campagnola. A big ovation when we walk in. I see my friend Bo Dietl, the cop-turned-TV personality. He’s sitting at a long table with his crew: Mike the Russian, Shelly the Tailor, Al Tomatoes, Joey Pots and Pans. They insist we join them.

J.P. asks Joey Pots and Pans how he got his nickname.

I love to cook!

Later we all break up laughing when Joey’s cell phone rings. He flips it open and yells, Pots!

Bo says he’s having a party in the Hamptons this weekend. He insists that J.P. and I come. Pots is cooking, he says. Tell him your favorite food, whatever it is, he’ll cook it. It makes me think of those long-ago Thursday nights at Gil’s house.